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July 24, 2013

Even tottering celebs leaving restaurants can help Mail Online flog handbags

By Axegrinder

Mail Online’s latest money-spinning gizmo is a widget that allows readers to buy the lavish accoutrements dangling from the arms and ears of their celebrity photo-fodder. It has been hailed by PR folk as a masterstroke – and bemoaned by some journalists of Axegrinder’s acquaintance as a sad state of affairs for an industry that once brought down a president.

When it launched last month, Mail Online was proudly claiming that 90 per cent of high street retailers were on board with the Fashion Finder scheme.

But one of them – Louis Vuitton – might not have have been too happy to see its latest must-have pink handbag marketed alongside a photo story of Helen Flanagan sprawled on a Merseyside pavement after taking a tumble negotiating the tricky task of exiting a restaurant.

The bag, temporarily abandoned by the starlet, could probably have been picked up for free by any opportunistic passers-by on the night. But Mail readers unlucky enough not to have been in Liverpool can instead buy it through the site – a snip at just £645.

The Mail blamed the ex-Corrie star’s Bambi on Ice impression on her eye-wateringly vertiginous heels which were, sadly, not available to buy.

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